Solo Prestidigitation Patrol

[Numia]

Spring 50th, 516

The mid-day sun radiated down upon Numia as she rode alongside her patron, mentor, and friend Sera Jyness Tiber. They were on patrol in the cobalt mountains, the first time Numia had ever been out here. She wasn’t ready until now, her resolve having reached a boiling point. Her mind went back to that fateful day when she had failed to save the life of an innocent from a monster, and she could sense Jyness’ concern that she might be pushing herself too much, too soon. Banter was beneath her, the trusty riding dog who had been with her since soon after the beginning of her trials as a squire. He was becoming more trustworthy, the reins had become as familiar to her as the fiddle she carried upon her back. She tied the reins around the horn of the saddle, deciding to practice her martial combat some more. Numia had picked up some things from another Pycon squire, she knew how to punch properly now, but that didn’t mean she could do it well.

Numia brought her arms back and curled her fingers into solid balls, stretching her arms out like rubber bands. Relaxing herself, she breathed and cleared her mind to better feel the shots. She let them go, and they swung forth. Snap. Snap. One after the other, she tried to add extra motion to it, but that wasn’t working out. The noise they made as they extended and fought the wind intrigued her, as well as the popping noise they made when they reached their final length. She had wondered lately if Priskil and Rhaus were truly looking out for her. Had they answered her prayers, but only in a way that made sense if their powers were limited? Numia imagined that the gods might be like people, too. Did they feel as she did with every failure? Or was this life a game to them? Numia thought she would never truly know, she only had her connection to Rhaus and her encounter with him to set an example with.

She could hear so much - the sway of the trees and every single leaf overhead being caressed by the wind, the clop of a horse stomping the muddy gravel trail which made a wet spattering noise, the pitter-patter of her steed’s feet and his heavy breathing. The occasional adjustment of his bit and the sloppy sound of his tongue over the wooden cylinder. These were things that other people didn’t pay much attention to unless they were close, and there were more things she could hear and understand as well with concentration.

Finishing up with her drill, she repeated it several times. Her punches were getting strong enough to hurt an unarmed human, but she didn’t trust herself to be any good in a fighting pit or a sparring match. She still relied on her magic and divine gift for her true power, a divine gift that seemed to be linked with her soul. She unstrapped the fiddle from her back and brought it in front of her, careful not to fall off. Then, she slid the bow out of the nook and set it to the instrument. She wondered what she might play today, and she had been singing lately though she only knew one song, the song from her heart that she called ‘Consignment to Oblivion’.

Numia’s confidence soared, and she had the image of a leaf in her mind that made her want to match the tune of her instrument to the tune of the forest around her. It was relaxing, when she played that first note. It instilled within her a sense of catharsis that made it easier to focus. The instrument still took away some of her concentration, but it freed up the other parts of her mind that were being weighed down by her emotions. Shew drew her bow back and forth, alternating the notes and matching the natural sway of the wind on the trees. She played those notes over and over again, varying them in intensity and letting the natural sounds accentuate the performance. Numia wondered if Jyness would be inspired by the song she was about to sing, after all she hadn’t sung it in front of her yet. The knight seemed to be alert and cold during her patrols, music was probably a distraction to her. Still, Numia herself needed this, it was her flame that she kept burning.

Numia rubbed her chin on her shoulder, and she began to sing in a deep but solemn voice. Her djed began to latch onto the image of a leaf in her mind, and she brought it down upon her back to begin to work on her cloak. She concentrated, singing, playing her instrument, and focusing on her magic at the same time. These three things took up her entire thought process, her mind melding with the sounds and feelings.

“These are the monsters that mar my soul.

They make me fail to lift away,

The madness that consumes my core

Oh the monsters that mar my soul,

[Numia]

Every word carried her emotions with it, her experiences. The chaos she had overcome, the corruption she endured. The flaming daggers of a burning tongue and the grating sound of nightmares were neatly arranged on glass pedestals within her mind. She was above them, she was no longer contained by them, Still, they were reminders of why she tried so hard. The djed in her mind and upon her back sent tingles up her spine as she concentrated on willing that image to become reality. The image of a leaf for a cloak, draping around her shoulders as if the heartbeat of nature obeyed her every whim.

"I abhor what they’ve done with me

Where have you gone with my soul?

I wish it hadn’t grown so old,

In your grasp it withers I’m told

Please, monsters, go away.”

Several chimes passed as Numia devolved into humming the song to herself, playing her instrument smoothly and more quietly. Jyness had been silent all this time, but Numia, with her eyes perpetually open and never blinking saw the knight sniffle in a rare moment of weakness, was she crying? Jyness turned her head and saw Numia looking at her. “Allergies.” She said, reinforcing those walls to her heart. The monsters within were great, and Numia had only seen two let alone the countless beasts that she was sure Jyness had fought against. Numia sighed and put away her fiddle, taking up the reins of Banter who had dutifully followed the course down the path from when she dropped them. The Pycon knew she couldn’t torture her friend like this, and as she wrapped the still-growing leaf around herself she just breathed. She felt the texture of the transformation change and grow, focusing on the details now. The crease in the center, the yellow-green veins. Such a small transformation took a lot out of her, but it was beginning to get easier and easier over the months prior.

Numia was beginning to lose herself in self-reflection when Jyness piped up. “That wailer really did a number on you, huh?” Jyness said. She’d never fought one herself before personally, but Jyness knew about most of the monsters from the records the order kept. “You’ve been working hard, I’ve noticed. I felt the same way on my first patrol as a squire, we were ambushed by Yukmen and two squires lost their lives. I blamed myself for a long time, but eventually I learned that things are as they are, it’s fate, Numia. Lhex, the god of fate makes things happen the way they happen and we have no true control.”

All of this came as a surprise to Numia, and it made her ponder within her mind what this really meant. Jyness blamed her failings on a god, but were things really so pre-ordained? In either case, what Jyness said struck a chord with the Pycon. “I don’t want to lose anyone anymore. I want to be there to save everyone I can, and I don’t want my inability to get in the way. I don’t know about this fate, but I live the life I choose and I’m choosing to become stronger so that I can best my adversaries. I’ll make my fate my own or I will die trying!”

It was a heavy proclamation, one she knew would be difficult to live up to. Numia huffed, letting her cloak fall behind her and taking the djed away from it at the same time. Slowly, it began to revert back to the original coloration and shape, stretching back to the original form. No longer was it the vague semblance of a leaf as it had been before. She began her drill again, throwing her arms back and stretching them out, then shoving them forward. She whapped the air, frustrated, wanting to grow. She wanted to be stronger. It was almost a selfish desire, she selfishly wanted to be there to protect others. She didn’t know what would happen if another murder happened on her watch.

Jyness didn’t seem upset by her answer, in fact she seemed to smirk at Numia’s response. “You’re either right or you’re a fool,” the sergeant knight said. “So stay alive, to save as many lives as you can. If you die, many more will because you weren’t there. So promise me Numia, that you won’t do anything stupid to get yourself killed!” Jyness spoke with a resolute and firm voice, but Numia could tell that despite Jyness having other squires the two of them were beginning to bond. It made her feel stronger, as if the both of them were a team that could work together and share their burdens.

[Numia]

Numia continued to drill her fighting practice, smacking the air with her balled fists to the point where her clay felt worn and stretched out, practically burning as a human muscle would. When she was finished, about a chime had passed and the sounds of nature were all that was there to guide her exerted mind. Numia did not know the name for djed, but she knew of an energy or a force that she called 'magic' that flowed through her. She had been meaning to ask Jyness, who knew most of the terminology that wizards used, wondering why Jyness had never told her about it. “Sera Jyness, what is the terminology for magic … I know the name of my disciplines, but I want to know more about the broader nature of these things.”

Jyness let slip the faintest hufflesnort Numia had ever heard. “Numia,” she said with practiced confidence. “I withheld this knowledge from you because I believe people begin to objectify their magic as soon as they begin to think they know it and this can cause a novice to fail to respect the true nature of the darker side it possesses. It’s called djed, Numia, and it’s far more complex and abstract than you can imagine.” Jyness brushed her hair back, gripping the reins more firmly again after doing so. Numia’s mind swarmed with this new information, all this time it was called Djed? Wait … she said not to objectify it. Does that mean it can’t be understood?

“Does that mean I shouldn’t bother trying to understand it?” Numia questioned.

“No, not at all. It’s just something far more deeper than you think at first. The infinite complexity of even the djed of a stone is impossible for the mind to read and process. Those that attempt to do so fall under the magical discipline of Auristics - which I have not been initiated into - which allows you to ‘understand’ that information in that way. However, it is possible to quantify djed in some way.”

“How do I understand it then?” Numia said, trying to wrap her head around it.

“There is a form of study for djed called ‘djed theory’ that most scholarly wizards are taught. Djed theory - as I understand it - is that a stone is not just a stone comprised of djed. It’s not just the weight, the material, and the texture, or even the sounds it makes when it gets kicked or thrown. It’s so much more than that. Djed contains within it the information for where it has been and potentially ever will be, and for every little piece of that stone. As you go further back, that stone might have been some sort of other material, it might have been the foundation of a house from a time long before this one and those who touched it would have left their own mark on the djed of the stone, cementing it in history and giving it purpose.” Jyness knew Numia was a good listener, so she was able to impart all of this information without asking questions to reinforce it.

Numia, on the other hand, was actually having a hard time just understanding the scope of djed. All of the pieces began to fit into place like a puzzle, matching up well with her personal experiences. It explained the unusual burn she had suffered at the hands of a monster. Whatever it did, the monster must have rewritten her djed so that it burned. It seemed logical, but Jyness warned her not to objectify it so she categorized her thoughts into a hypothesis. This must be why magic is so dangerous. We can never truly understand it…

Numia spoke up with her opinions on the subject. “I think I understand, or don’t fully understand as that would be impossible as you say. So even abstract concepts like fate are djed then?”

Jyness gave a sigh. “Probably. There might be different kinds of djed, and the djed of a god is much different from the mundane djed we can manipulate in ourselves. There are even different planes of existence such as the Ukalas that might have different laws of djed than our own.” Jyness had dropped information on two new subjects, and she patiently waited for Numia to ask about them. She actually seemed to enjoy sharing what she knew, she was the know-it-all after all. Understanding magic helped her to understand monsters, and becoming one of the more well educated knights was something that she prided herself in despite her stern outward appearance.

Numia adjusted her reins, surprised that she had forgotten about Banter in the time Jyness had spoken. She steered him closer to Jyness, since he had drifted far off to one side of the kabrin road. The Ukalas sounds odd … laws of djed? She didn’t want to change the subject despite having a burning curiosity for a potential new world to explore. “What are the laws of djed?”

Jyness spoke affirmatively and with clarity, but not before she took a breath. “They’re simple,” she said. “They are divided into three distinct laws. The first law is that djed cannot be created or destroyed, it can only transformed. This means that if I were to cut something in two it would simply transform into two objects. If I smashed it to bits, those bits would still be there. If I used it in a spell, it would become a part of the spell.”

The first law sounded nice to Numia, but at the same time terrifying. You could change everything about a person until they were a shade of their former selves, but you couldn’t outright destroy their place in time, their fate, their physical shell and everything impact they had made upon the world all at once. “What’s the second law?”

Jyness continued on with her explanation. “Some forms of Djed are purer than others. This goes back to what I was saying about a god’s djed. The djed of a basic shape on a sheet of paper is weaker than the djed of our being because it has experienced less and does not have a will that gives it a desire to change. An outside force must change it. A tiny Pycon spell-flinger like you might have purer djed to transform than a tall human with no previous experience in magic. This brings me to the third law; some transformations are irreversible. If I lit that drawing of a shape on fire everything about it would change and I would not be able to change the ashes back into an exact replica of what it used to be.”

Numia was quiet, she let everything sink in as she repeated Jyness’ words in her mind. “Is there a fourth law?”

“No. But I have a personal fourth law - don’t be an idiot!” Jyness had a slightly more high-strung tone now in her voice. “I’m serious Numia, the disciplines of magic you know are called personal magic. They transform bits of your djed to do different things, and much of these transformations are irreversible. You are, in a sense, trading a piece of who you are to impose your will on the world. It’s dangerous, and it’s scary. As a mage, you have a small reserve that builds up as you rest and consume food. My rule of thumb is that as soon as I start to feel at all different I stop using the magic unless absolutely necessary. It’s called overgiving, it can take from anywhere. It can change your personality, your physical body, or even leave marks upon your mind that can’t be wiped away.”

Jyness’ warnings struck a chord with the Pycon, and the gates of her soul began to swing open as a wave of fear and realization hit her. “I .. I didn’t know it was like that. I thought there were just ‘consequences’, I didn’t know what those consequences were. That’s actually terrifying, and it means I could someday become the nightmare of someone else. I still have nightmares of that creature I saw from the void! It only gets worse, if more quiet. Lately, the sounds of chaos have plagued me deeply and the loss I suffered. Now I know why you speak of fate this way. Still … if there’s a way, I’ll figure out how to transform the djed of my fate if I have to, if I’m understanding this right.”

Her understanding of magic had broadened her view of the world. She could think like a wizard if she wanted to now, to see the world in the many pieces and parts and ideas and concepts and everything that could be perceived in her sphere of knowledge within this infinite stormy sea. “I’m glad you told me ... Sera Jyness. Especially now; I won’t take something like that for granted.”

[Izuyanai]

Grades : Grades Name: Numia XP: Observation +2 Riding +1 Unarmed Combat +2 Pycon Fiddle +2 Singing +2 Philosophy +1 Lores: Cobalt Mountains Priskil: Goddess of Radiance Magic: Djed Theory Magic: Knowing the Dangers Magic: The Laws of Djed Magic: Some Forms of Djed are Purer than Others Additional: +3 Shield Points Notes: Let me know if you think I’ve missed something.